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"We all condemn the Sohrab Goth incident in Karachi when police rescued around 50 students of a madrassah found chained in the basement during a raid," he said, adding that the episode had damaged the reputation of thousands of well-run religious schools.

The story of the Zakarya Madrassah in Sohrab Goth, on the northern outskirts of Karachi, has shocked many in Pakistan.

Young boys and men were chained up for days on end in a brutal form of religious rehab.

Police said they found boys as young as eight who had been beaten raw.

Parents told The Daily Telegraph they paid £25 a month for the service and provided their own chains.

Two members of staff have been arrested but police are still searching for the mufti who ran the school.

However, reform of the sector is likely to be problematic in a country where so many children rely on informal education.

Khadim Hussain, of the Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation, said he believed abuse was the norm in most madrassahs.

Simply banning unlicensed schools, he said, would simply leave millions of boys with nowhere to go.

"A large part of the population is using them, people who are marginalised, largely because of a crumbling public education system," he said.

"If the government would put money into improving the public system then no one would use the madrassahs in the first place."